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    The Battle to the Weak
    The Battle to the Weak
    The Battle to the Weak
    Ebook366 pages5 hours

    The Battle to the Weak

    By Hilda Vaughan

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    A forgotten Welsh novel, first published in 1925, this love story is also a portrait of class conflict and the plight of rural women. The plot turns on young Rhys Lloyd's interest in the ideas of Social Darwinism and the League of Nations, which make him a dangerous figure in his village. To complicate his life further, Rhys is the son of a Welsh-speaking Nonconformist—but he is falling in love with the church-going Esther. The couple suffers from the disapproval of their neighbors, until—over time—the stoic and determined Esther calmly transcends the casual brutality of her agricultural upbringing, improves the lot of the other villagers, and finds new strength and organic spirituality.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherParthian Books
    Release dateApr 1, 2011
    ISBN9781908069269
    The Battle to the Weak
    Author

    Hilda Vaughan

    Hilda Vaughan (1892-1985) was born and raised in Builth Wells. During the First World War, she worked in a Red Cross hospital and as organising secretary of the Woman’s Land Army in Breconshire and Radnorshire. She married the novelist Charles Morgan in 1923 and they had a daughter and a son. Vaughan published ten novels, two plays and a number of short stories. Her work is distinguished by its lyrical yet realistic evocation of Welsh rural landscapes and customs, and by her incisive deconstruction of the politics of class, gender and nationality.

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    • 3/5
      A few years ago, I put together a list of postwar British women writers. Some of them were already known to me – Olivia Manning, Naomi Mitchison, Elizabeth Taylor – and not all of them began their careers after WWII, but there were undoubtedly some particularly big names from the period I chose to ignore… Not, I hasten to add, that I considered my list in any way complete. It was a selection. And I did indeed track down books by some of the names on the list – Katherine Burdekin, Susan Ertz, Pamela Frankau, Storm Jameson, E Arnot Robertson, GB Stern… and Hilda Vaughan. Who, it turns out, probably didn’t really fit on the list, although her last novel was published in 1954, as she was chiefly active between the wars and is probably better considered a contemporary of DH Lawrence than a postwar writer. And, in fact, The Battle to the Weak, her first novel, has much in common with Lawrence’s novels. A young woman from a poor farming family in mid-Wales is sent to stay with an aunt at a seaside town. There she meets a young man, and the two fall in love. Unfortunately, it turns out he’s the son of her father’s mortal enemy, a neighbouring farmer he’s been violently clashing with for years. The son was given to his aunt at a very young age and more or less adopted, so he’s not at all involved in the feud. When the young woman’s father learns the identity of her fiancé, he forbids the wedding. As does the fiancé’s father. So the fiancé goes off to Canada to make his fortune. The young woman prepares to join him, but her father fights with her sister, who falls down the stairs and is paralysed from the waist down. The woman puts her plans on hold to look after her sister. Years pass. The sister dies. The young woman prepares to move to Canada. Then the father dies, so the young woman stays on to help her mother. The man in Canada writes and tells the young woman he couldn’t wait and has married. Years pass. The man returns to Wales, and the two eventually reconnect. In its depiction of rural life in the 1920s, The Battle to the Weak is very Lawrentian. There’s also a cross-generational aspect. But Vaughan’s novel is much more grim than anything Lawrence wrote. The lives she documents are hard, and the men – bar a couple of exceptions, one of which is the fiancé – are monsters. Especially the father. The prose is typical of the period, but it’s good. If you like fiction from the early part of the twentieth century, then Vaughan is definitely worth a go.

    Book preview

    The Battle to the Weak - Hilda Vaughan

    WEAK

    PROLOGUE

    For an hour after sunrise, a shepherd who stood upon the summit of the Garth might have believed himself returned to the first days of creation. For ‘there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground’. Later in the day it would be possible, from this point, to look westward into the bleak country of Wales and eastward over the richer pasturage of Herefordshire. Now the world was without form and void; the valley beneath and the hills beyond were alike hidden.

    The mist thinned slowly as time passed. Presently the upper slopes of the hillside became visible like the sea coast of an island itself half-submerged, and the higher patches of lightness admitted a dominant blue from the sky. From one of these – a picture of dull pastel in a billowy frame – emerged the quivering outline of a farm.

    A man on horseback stooped from his saddle to kiss a girl who carried a baby in her arms. As he straightened himself he glanced over his shoulder at his house and its outbuildings. Whitewash still fresh spoke of a new tenant, and, though his pride of ownership had already lost its first fine savour, John Bevan had not ceased to talk long and loud of ‘My farm’, ‘My stock’, and ‘My house’. He surveyed them now with obvious pleasure; then turned once more to the frail figure of his wife. ‘She is bein’ my missus, too,’ he reflected. ‘Not lookin’ her best now, she isn’t, but when I was marryin’ her there was a lot as ’ould have liked to have her, and I was cuttin’ ’em all out.’

    When he had first seen her, faintly flushed by the excitements of the yearly pleasure fair, her delicate prettiness had appeared to him like that of a wild rose. Since then she had faded fast, and her expression threatened to become peevish. Seeing her daily, he had scarcely noticed the change, but she knew it was creeping upon her. Her manner was the more timid because she understood that what small influence she had over him would vanish with her physical attractions.

    ‘Payin’ less and less heed to me he’ll be, and all along o’ the children I do bear him,’ she reflected, as she watched him ride off briskly down the cart track which led from Pengarreg to the valley below.

    Straightening herself, she carried her bundle back into the kitchen where she put it in the wicker cradle beside the hearth. She was glad to have disposed of it, for the next baby, to whom she must give birth in three months’ time, demanded the whole slight stock of her vitality. She was thankful that Esther seldom cried, and proud of the child’s appearance, which even John Bevan’s unmarried sisters were forced to admire. Yet she was disappointed and shocked at finding so little pleasure in her motherhood.

    ‘I do wish as I were not havin’ another so soon,’ she sighed, looking down at the round little head, covered with golden-red fluff, soft as a duckling’s down. ‘I don’t seem to take no delight in Esther now, like what I did when she were first born.’ She turned away listlessly from the cradle. ‘And indeed I don’t know how to come around the work in this great big old house. I was a deal happier in the small little one as we were havin’ the first year o’ our marriage. Times ’on’t never be like that no more. The boss he do seem to think more o’ his drink than he do o’ me since he comed into his grandfather’s money.’

    With a deepening line of worry between her brows she began to clear away the breakfast. A saucer slipped through her fingers, and falling on to the stone floor broke to pieces with the tinkling sound of ice.

    ‘Oh dear, oh dear!’ she cried. Little Esther opened her round grey eyes and stared solemnly.

    To her the room was a vast place in which giants moved to and fro about their mysterious business. Sometimes they came and clapped their hands and smiled at her, and she smiled back at them, a slow, fat smile that produced a dimple in each of her cheeks: but for the greater part of her time she lay unheeded, gazing at the strange sights, and listening to the noises around her. She had already begun to distinguish the sounds of pain and anger, and her mother’s exclamation of distress awoke a dim response in her. She tried to say the word they had been at such pains to teach her, but it was unheard in the clatter of crockery. She tried to struggle out of her cradle, a new and exciting accomplishment, but she was wound up in a thick shawl and could not extricate herself. Her impulse was to cry; but, as that seldom brought her attention or relief, she lay still, whimpering slightly, and fighting with fat little pink hands to free herself from bondage. In the attempt she grew sleepy. Her mother had gone from the room, and it was profoundly quiet. A sheepdog slunk in at the open door. Having sniffed the floor for crumbs, he came to the cradle-side, wagged his tail shyly, and licked the clutching fingers. Once more Esther became wide awake, and this time she crooned with delight; but at the sound of a human footfall, and the fear of a blow, the big warm creature that was soft to touch was gone. The world was full of bright things at which Esther grabbed, trying to hold them because they pleased her, or to convey them to her mouth in order to find out if they were good to taste. Some of them, like the sunshine on the wall, could never be caught, and others were snatched away from her by the giants. She did not know why the friendly dog had gone. She was lonely and began to cry, but after a while her sobs turned to deep breathing and she fell asleep.

    Annie Bevan had started a dozen of her tasks and finished none. Already she was exhausted, though the long summer’s day lay before her. She dragged herself into the kitchen, and, noticing that the fire had gone out and would have to be re-lit, dropped on to a chair, laid her arms on the table, and hid her face in them. ‘Three months more,’ she thought, ‘and me goin’ weaker all the while.’

    Meanwhile the man, riding along on a showy pony, was intent upon his day’s outing. The moist cool air was fragrant with the meadowsweet beside the track, and with the honeysuckle which festooned the rocks and stunted may trees on the open hillside. The river valley beneath him was still shrouded in mist, so that he appeared to be riding down from the sky into a bank of white clouds. As the first rays of the sun touched them, the dew-drenched grass slopes about him began to glitter and sparkle with millions of prismatic points of light. Even to him, whose pleasures were mainly of the grosser sort, the beauty of that morning made its appeal, quickening his sense of well-being and filling him with new fire. He threw up his head and began to sing his favourite hymn – ‘Jerusalem the golden, with milk and honey blest’. The words echoed from the far side of the narrow dingle down which he had begun to ride, and died away long after they had been uttered. He enjoyed making so much noise where he alone could be heard. The sound of his singing seemed to fill the universe. He flung back his shoulders, filled his lungs, and sang on lustily in a rough bass voice, lingering over the words he liked best – ‘The shout of them that triumph, the song of them that feast’. So pleased was he with the performance that, having bawled out the hymn once, he began it over again; but when he reached for the second time the line ‘And they who with their Leader have conquer’d in the fight’, which he had rendered with great spirit on the first occasion, he had entered the mist zone, and an impenetrable curtain muffled the sound of his singing. It was light, yet he could scarcely see where he was going. Even the pricked ears of his pony were dim as though seen from a distance. He was forced to drop the reins on her neck and to let her find the way for him. He shivered with cold, and abruptly ceased to sing, feeling less secure than he had done in the importance of his own personality. His face assumed a sullen look, and he rode on quietly until he reached the valley where the track he had been following joined the main road to Llangantyn. There he gathered up his reins, turned at right angles, and trotted along briskly, for it was now level going. Only the click-click of iron horseshoes on a metalled highway, and the quiet murmuring of a river, unseen in the fog, broke the stillness.

    Suddenly ahead of him loomed up another figure on horseback, riding in the same direction but at a more sober pace. He urged on his pony and overtook his fellow-traveller.

    ‘Lloyd the Henallt, is it?’ he cried as he came abreast of him. ‘Well, well, and where are you off to so early?’

    The man thus addressed was of a type still to be found among the Celtic peoples of Wales. His skull was long and narrow, and his black eyes slightly oblique. He was short and thin, and his yellowish complexion suggested kinship with the Portuguese. Clean-shaven, but for trim black side-whiskers, he wore a dark suit and a bowler hat, the badge of well-to-do respectability. There was nothing in his expression to indicate that he was pleased at the prospect of having company on the road, but he greeted his neighbour civilly enough.

    ‘Good mornin’ to you, Mr Bevan. What are you thinkin’ o’ the weather? Is it likely to take up now?’

    ‘’Deed, I don’t know. It do look likely whatever with this old mist so thick first thing in the mornin’. But wherever are you off to?’

    ‘Oh, goin’ into Llangantyn, I am.’

    ‘What for at this time o’ day? There’s no one ill up at your place, is there?’

    ‘No, indeed; we’re all keepin’ pretty fair.’

    ‘Maybe you’re wantin’ the vet, then?’

    ‘No, no.’

    ‘Well, you can’t be goin’ shoppin’ at this hour?’

    Elias Lloyd hesitated and shot an angry glance at his persistent questioner. At last he said reluctantly ‘To tell you the truth now, I’m catching the mail down to Aberyscir.’

    ‘You don’t say! Doin’ the very same as myself, then.’

    Elias Lloyd turned his head sharply and peered up through the mist.

    ‘Are you goin’ to Aberyscir today?’

    ‘Yes, indeed. They do tell me the cattle market there is bein’ a deal better nor ours in Llangantyn. Wantin’ to buy a cow, I am, so I did think to go and look for one there.’

    ‘You are givin’ yourself a terrible long journey to buy one old cow.’

    John Bevan laughed. ‘Oh, you aren’t one to go from home, only on some partic’lar business, or to tend chapel. You don’t understand a man likin’ to treat hisself onst in a while. Havin’ plenty o’ money I am to afford an outin’ since I comed into Pengarreg after grandfather,’ and he glanced down patronisingly at the man whose brother had been the bailiff there in the late owner’s time.

    ‘Havin’ to be tight on the money, the Lloyds is, no doubt,’ he reflected. ‘Not bein’ in so good a position as what I am.’

    ‘Maybe,’ Elias Lloyd ventured, ‘as I could be buyin’ a cow for you – savin’ you the expense of the journey…?’

    ‘Crafty old fox,’ thought John Bevan. ‘Thinkin’ to make his bit out of it.’

    ‘You’re wonderful kind, Mr Lloyd,’ he answered, clapping him heartily on the shoulder, ‘but indeed I’m looking forward to the trip. And what is takin’ you to Aberyscir?’

    ‘Oh! A small little matter o’ business.’

    ‘Oh indeed! Wantin’ to buy summat, are you?’

    ‘No, I’m not wantin’ to buy nothin’.’

    ‘Well, damn you, man, what are you bein’ so close about? Anyone ’ould think as you was goin’ to make your will.’

    Elias Lloyd shifted uneasily in the saddle. ‘Havin’ a sale o’ sheep, I am,’ he announced after an interval of silence.

    ‘Well, fancy my not hearin’ o’ that before! I wasn’t knowin’ as you carried enough sheep at the Henallt to have a regular sale like.’

    ‘’Tis my brother’s sale as well as mine.’

    ‘Your brother? Not the one as was bailiff to grandfather?’

    ‘That’s the only brother I’m havin’.’

    ‘But he is livin’ in a small little cottage alongside o’ your place. He’s not havin’ much land to keep sheep on.’

    ‘Enough for a few, whatever.’

    ‘What do make you have your sale so far from home?’

    ‘Well, indeed, I’m knowin’ some good buyers down by Aberyscir.’

    ‘Well, well.’

    Conversation languished.

    As they neared Llangantyn, the mist grew more transparent, and, lifting suddenly, hung in quivering trails upon the hills on either side of the valley. Flat pastures came into view, gay with the lush grass of early summer, in which the placid cows stood knee deep. The river that had come dashing down from the mountains, foaming and furious, broadened out, and ran smoothly between low banks.

    ‘Rich land here,’ observed John Bevan.

    Elias Lloyd grunted his assent. Side by side they rode over the stone bridge, and into the sleepy little town. The shutters of the shop windows creaked and groaned as they were taken down, as if they were unwilling as the townsfolk themselves to be disturbed in their late slumbers.

    ‘Now is the time to be showin’ these old townies as honest farmers are astir,’ cried John Bevan, eager for an opportunity to show off his horsemanship. ‘I never did see such a late-risin’ lazy lot,’ and he set his pony at a gallop that sent sparks flying from the cobblestones, and made the clatter of hooves echo through the streets.

    Opposite the Greyhound Hotel he pulled her up, so regardless of her mouth that she reared and came to a standstill on her haunches. Flinging himself off, he shouted for the ostler, and swaggered into the bar, pleasantly conscious of the superiority of such an entrance to that of the sober Methodist, who rode quietly into the yard, dismounted slowly, and led his own horse into the stable. A couple of drinks further strengthened John Bevan’s self-esteem, and he strode off to the railway station, humming to himself so gaily that passers-by turned to stare at him.

    The twenty-mile journey to Aberyscir was accomplished leisurely in an hour and a half.

    The narrow streets of the old-fashioned town were crowded to suffocation, and the high-pitched voices of a Welsh crowd, engaged in the congenial pursuit of bartering, made a deafening clamour. John Bevan, coming from an anglicised border county, could not speak his own language, and despised his fellow-countrymen who were able to do so as much as they despised him. But he could shout as loud and gesticulate as freely in a bargain as the best of them; and when he had struck his man’s extended hand with a dramatic gesture of finality signifying that the deal was made, he led away the cow he had bought, satisfied that he had done a creditable morning’s work. He had some difficulty in finding the drover who was to take her home for him with other cattle bound for Llangantyn. The delay made him thirsty. Talking to the bystanders in the heat and dust of the market made him yet thirstier, and when he succeeded in tracking down his man and disposing of the cow, he adjourned with several dealers to the nearest public house, and stood them round after round of drinks. They left him at last, flushed and elated, with his hat pushed back on his head, and his huge red hands thrust deep into his pockets. Out into the street he strolled, jingling his money and wondering whether he had better take the next train home.

    ‘There’s work to be done there,’ he reflected, ‘and it ’ould pleasure the Missus wonderful to see me back early.’

    A dealer leading a colt shouted a greeting at him as he passed. A fine colt! John Bevan with his eye for a horse must needs go to look at it. He was back in the smithfield before he was aware of it, and engaged in a lively piece of banter with a young woman against whom he had jostled.

    ‘Damn it all,’ he thought, ‘there’s a bit o’ life to be seen here. Best enjoy myself now as I’ve got the chanst.’

    The late afternoon found him entering another public house for a last drink on his way to the railway station.

    ‘No more nor one,’ he told himself.

    A hand was laid on his arm, and looking down he saw the stunted figure of Ben Davies, a neighbour of his from the Llangantyn district.

    ‘Why, Mr Davies,’ he cried, before he had recalled that the man was a noted mischief-maker whom wise folk avoided. ‘’Tis good to meet someone here as can talk a word o’ English. Come and have a drink, man.’

    Nothing loth, the little cringing fellow followed him to the counter and began to administer compliments. For the sake of these John Bevan stood him another drink, and another, and because by that time he was himself becoming fuddled and ready to give anything to a man who pleased him, or to knock down one who did not, he forgot about his train home and his good intentions, and settled himself down to enjoy one of his drinking bouts.

    ‘You’re a good fellow, Ben Davies,’ he said, as though he defied his listener to contradict him. ‘I don’t see it fair to say nothin’ against you like what some o’ them old Methodists do do. Give me a man as can drink – like the gentries; my friends is all bein’ gentlemen.’ And he laughed loudly.

    Then Ben Davies saw his opportunity for getting even with Elias Lloyd who had denounced him at a chapel meeting. With eyes craftily narrowed and head on one side, he began: ‘You are bein’ in wonderful good spirits today, Mr Bevan.’

    ‘Come you, we must all be havin’ a joke sometimes.’

    ‘Jokes is all very well; but I could be tellin’ you summat – but there – I mustn’t be sayin’ nothin’, or I’ll be gettin’ myself into trouble. I ’ould be likin’ to serve you, Mr Bevan, since you are bein’ that kind; but I’m a poor man, and we must each of us be thinkin’ of our own skin.’

    ‘Whatever do you mean, man?’

    ‘What I am sayin’, Mr Bevan. Wantin’ to act like a neighbour to you, I am.’

    ‘Well?’

    ‘But ’tisn’t hardly my business. And, mind you, ’tis only hearsay. I don’t know nothin’ for certain.’

    ‘Out with it, man.’

    ‘You ’on’t never be mentionin’ my name if I do tell you?’

    ‘No, no. Speak up, can’t you?’

    Ben Davies sidled up closer.

    ‘Are you seein’ anything strange with Elias Lloyd’s sheep, the ones as he and his brother is makin’ a sale of today?’ he whispered.

    John Bevan stared down at him. ‘I haven’t been lookin’ at his old sheep. What are they to me?’

    Ben Davies shrugged his shoulders as though disclaiming any responsibility. ‘Maybe they aren’t nothin’.’ He finished his drink and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Then he added: ‘But maybe as they are.’ There was another pause. ‘All I do say is as some o’ the wethers do look as if they’d had their ear-marks altered so as they shan’t be recognised.’

    John Bevan made a clicking sound with his tongue. ‘Stolen?’ he suggested vaguely looking round the crowded room and wishing that someone would strike up a song. He wanted to join in a chorus and to beat time upon the counter with his fist, but he was not sufficiently drunk to start singing alone.

    ‘Stolen,’ repeated Ben Davies ominously. ‘Stolen, sure, to be. I wonder now whose sheep they may have been?’ After a while he added: ‘What ’ould you be doin’ now, if someone was to steal sheep o’ yours, Mr Bevan?’

    ‘I’d be killin’ ’em just.’

    ‘And serve ’em right too. ’Tis a wicked thing robbin’ a neighbour.… Was you countin’ all your sheep when you did come into your property after your grandfather?’

    ‘Not just at first I wasn’t. The snow was lyin’ that deep when I took over the place.’

    Ben Davies shook his head. ‘Pity. Pity indeed.’

    John Bevan stared at him for a full minute, and the colour heightened in his already flushed face.

    ‘Are you meanin’ as them sheep was stolen off o’ me?’ he demanded.

    Ben Davies shrank away from him. ‘I ’ouldn’t like to say so, Mr Bevan.’

    ‘Well, I’ll be findin’ out whatever.’ His voice rose to a shout. ‘I’ll never be restin’ until I do know the truth. And if those sheep was bein’ mine…’

    He left the sentence unfinished, and brought down his clenched fist upon the counter so that the glasses danced. A number of strangers standing near turned to stare at his angry face.

    ‘An ugly customer that,’ whispered one.

    ‘Ah! But he’s a fine swampin’ lad. Look at the shoulders he’s got on him, and a neck like a bull, just. Them big red-haired fellows is terrors to fight. I’ve known a lot o’ ’em, all with the same hissy tempers. You mind them fierce-rollin’ eyes he’s got too. I ’ouldn’t like to handle a colt with eyes like that, and men and horses is bein’ wonderful sim’lar.’

    ‘Ah, well! Them noisy ones is mostly bein’ bested by the quiet little ’uns. Look at that small little sneakin’ chap with him – for all the world like a weasel after a big dull old rabbit.’

    ‘I don’t believe,’ thundered John Bevan, ‘as the man is born as ’ould dare to rob me under my very nose.’

    The mocking grins which spread over the listeners’ faces goaded him to fury.

    ‘If that’s what you do think, I’ll soon be showin’ you,’ he shouted. ‘Out o’ my way, you.’

    He flung out into the street. The loitering crowd there impeded his progress, and he swore under his breath as he elbowed his way through it, whilst the sweat poured down his face and the dust made his eyes smart. In spite of his haste the Lloyds’ sale was over, and the last lot of sheep was being unpenned when he burst into the smithfield.

    ‘Holt,’ he cried, ‘I do want to look at your sheep.’

    A grey-bearded farmer looked him up and down with evident disapproval.

    ‘No use, man. I’ve only now been buyin’ ’em, and I’m not wishful to sell again.’

    ‘I don’t want to buy the damned sheep.’

    ‘Then get out o’ my way, can’t you? Time’s money to honest folk.’ And muttering something about drunken fools, the farmer shouldered past him, and shouted to the boy in front of the flock to go on.

    ‘Stop those sheep,’ roared John Bevan, as they pattered out of sight round a bend in the road leading out of the smithfield. ‘I do demand to see their ear-marks.’

    ‘That you ’on’t do,’ said their new owner. ‘I’ve paid my deposit on the sheep to one man, and I don’t want no bother about their belongin’ to another. I can see right enough what you are gettin’ at. You leave me and my sheep alone.’

    He hurried away, pursued by drunken shouting.

    ‘Damn you, you old fool! You can’t stop me to look at the sheep. They’re bein’ mine, I tell you. I don’t care who do know it. I’m an honest man. I’ve been robbed. Robbed, d’you hear? A swindlin’ hypocritical neighbour o’ mine’s robbed me. That’s why he was bein’ so close about his business here this mornin’. I didn’t think at the time, but ’tis plain as daylight now. I’ll teach him to steal my sheep, I’ll…’

    The farmer whom he had followed down the street turned and faced him.

    ‘Look here, there’s the policeman comin’. You go and tell him what it’s all about.’ And he left him standing alone, his feet planted wide apart, his hat pushed far back on his head, swaying slightly as he stood. Seeing the policeman’s eye upon him, he ceased to shout and tried to pull himself together. Since he had no evidence that the sheep had been stolen, it would be wise to make enquiries into the matter before raising a scandal; but the effort needed to control his temper made him rage the more. Clenching his fists until his nails bit into the horny palms of his hands, he staggered off in search of the auctioneer, and having, with difficulty and delay, collected the names and addresses of those to whom the sheep had been sold, returned to the public house in which he had left Ben Davies. Other farmers from Llangantyn had joined the company and greeted him with derisive laughter.

    ‘Well, well,’ cried one of them. ‘I was allus hearin’ as you did think yourself too sharp to be bested by no one. Fancy an innocent old Methodist stealin’ the sheep off o’ your grandfather’s farm atween the day as he come to die and you was takin’ over the place!’

    ‘I don’t say as they was stolen for sure,’ put in Ben Davies. ‘I ’ouldn’t like to make no trouble.’

    The others greeted this as a good joke, and their laughter, though for the moment it was not directed against himself, infuriated John Bevan. Between them they enraged him to such a pitch that at last they ceased to enjoy the fun of seeing such a boastful man made to look a fool, and became alarmed for their own safety. So they agreed with him that Elias Lloyd and his brother were unparalleled rogues, for whom no punishment could be too severe. John Bevan, meanwhile, drank more and more beer, and became, with each tankard, more fuddled and furious.

    On the journey home he muttered and nodded, his head hanging foolishly first on one side and then on the other, his bloodshot eyes half-closed. Now and then a violent jerk would awaken him, and glaring around him he would announce that he intended to break every bone in the bodies of Elias Lloyd and his misbegotten brother.

    Meanwhile the chapel deacon, having heard the tumult of his neighbour’s arrival at Aberyscir station, had wisely kept out of his way. When they alighted at Llangantyn he was quick to reach the Greyhound Hotel, and in a few minutes he had left the town, and was urging his grass-blown pony homeward.

    The river flowed serene and silvery in the quiet evening light. The dusty white road was deserted. The hills on either side of it were growing dark, and the level pastures beside the river were an emerald velvet. The mood of this still twilight hour was soothing even to Elias Lloyd, who ordinarily cared little for beauty and was more concerned with the jealousy of God than with His gifts. His pace slackened as he approached the steep track which led up to his farm on the hillside. With feet shaken clear of the stirrups and reins dropped on his pony’s neck, he jogged along with his mind for once empty of fear or wrath. He had not reckoned on John Bevan’s ability to sit a horse at full gallop when he was almost too drunk to stand upright, and the thunder of hooves on the road came as an unexpected warning that he was being pursued.

    ‘That drunkard, sure to be,’ he thought. ‘I’d best be givin’ him the slip quick. He’s dangerous tonight. By mornin’ he’ll be forgettin’ the lies some mischief-makers have been tellin’ him in market, and if he’s still bein’ inclined to quarrel, I’ll go and reason him out of it. If there was maybe one or perhaps two o’ his sheep got put in with my brother’s by mistake, he can’t never prove it.’

    Without stopping to look over his shoulder he seized the reins, thrust his feet hurriedly into the stirrups, and urged his fat pony forward. The drowsy valley was filled with the clamour of iron beating furiously upon stone, and a cloud of dust arose. But fast as Elias Lloyd rode, John Bevan gained upon him.

    ‘Come on, damn you, come on,’ he shouted, striking his pony blow after blow with his stick.

    With terror-stricken eyes and nostrils distended, she galloped on, labouring for breath and flecked with foam.

    ‘Now I’ve got you,’ yelled her rider as he came abreast of his quarry. ‘Now I’ll learn you to go stealin’ my sheep, you bloody hypocrite – you!’

    Elias Lloyd swerved out of the way just in time to avoid a shattering blow, and as the other rode at him again, he wheeled his horse round and shouted with all the vehemence of extreme fear: ‘Don’t you be hittin’ me now. Holt, for the Lord’s sake! Holt! There’s some mistake, man.’

    ‘Mistake,’ roared John Bevan. ‘You dare to call it a mistake – stealin’ my sheep and making o’ me a laughin’ stock amongst strangers?’

    And he rode at his enemy once more, and tried to seize his horse by the bridle. In doing so he almost rolled out of his own saddle, and the two terrified ponies reared and plunged. Elias Lloyd, always a

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